Jim Messina:“Much like the entire Republican Convention, Mitt Romney’s speech tonight offered many personal attacks and gauzy platitudes, but no tangible ideas to move the country forward. What he didn’t share were his actual proposals, which would take our country backwards: another $5 trillion in budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy paid for by the middle class; transforming Medicare into a voucher program on the backs of seniors; an end to fuel efficiency standards and tax credits for renewable energy; deep cuts in student grants and loans; and the rollback of Wall Street reforms. And in an almost 45-minute speech, Mitt Romney didn’t find a moment to mention Afghanistan. With no new plans and evasion about his real plans, Mitt Romney leaves this convention no stronger than he came.”

You got it, Jim; Mitt was a BIG FAIL.

NEXT: On to Charlotte for some REAL DIVERSITY. Won’t need to do no NEGRO-SPOTTING there.

On his show tonight, Bill Maher squared off with Dinesh D’Souza, the face of a new anti-Obama documentary. Maher challenged D’Souza’s claims that Obama holds anti-colonial, anti-capitalist views that he inherited from his father, argued that the policies Obama has implemented have not been as radical as Republicans have made them out to be, and even confronted D’Souza over the controversial comments that got him fired from ABC ten years ago, which were set off by comments D’Souza made on Politically Incorrect.

Maher asked D’Souza about his claim that President Obama is full of rage. D’Souza cited the Affordable Care Act, claiming that Obama did not adopt a single Republican idea into the bill. Maher argued that the health care law is full of conservative ideas, and was a “blowjob” to the health insurance companies. D’Souza shot back by claiming that the Affordable Care Act was the first significant social program not to have bipartisan support on Congress. Maher said that the Republicans have had no interest in supporting anything that Obama has pushed for in Congress since his inauguration.

Maher went so far as to attack the patriotism of the Republican party for not wanting to fix the economy because it would allow Obama to secure reelection. D’Souza charged that Democrats acted similarly under George W. Bush, and the only reason they supported the war in Iraq was because of a post-9/11 “patriotic surge.”

The conversation then turned to D’Souza’s documentary, 2016: Obama’s America, in which he claims that Obama is influenced by his father’s anti-colonialist views. When D’Souza tried to defend his allegations, Maher asked him “how far up [his] ass” he had to go to think up that claim. And as for the contemporary applications of Obama holding anti-colonialist views, D’Souza argued that it is part of an anti-capitalist ideology Obama holds that views America as a “rogue nation.”

The way in which Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler has attempted to rid the state’s voter rolls of non-citizens has been controversial and disappointing.

Colorado should expect better.

Gessler sent letters to nearly 4,000 voters, calling their status into question, before he got access to a federal database that allowed him to check citizenship.

Once he ran some of those names through the database, he did not find any non-citizens on the voter rolls.

In the meantime, thousands of people, the vast majority of them Democrats and unaffiliated voters, have gotten an official letter from an elected official asking them to prove their status. On Thursday, the secretary’s office announced that 16 who got letters withdrew their registrations.

Critics are screaming at the top of their lungs that Gessler, a Republican, is using his power to intimidate voters whose political affiliations are different than his in the run-up to the November elections. Those accusations are not easily dismissed.

While we have supported efforts to ensure the voter rolls do not contain non-citizens, particularly given the close nature of some races, we do not condone efforts that might make legitimate voters question their ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right to vote.

Three days after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called California Gov. Jerry Brown an “old retread,” the Democratic governor fired back on Thursday, challenging Christie to a physical fitness contest.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a little retread,” the 74-year-old, third-term governor told members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 in Los Angeles. “Not as much hair, I’m slowed down a little bit. But I have to tell you, I ran three miles in 29 minutes two nights ago … and I hereby challenge Gov. Christie to a three-mile race, a pushup contest and a chin-up contest. And whatever he wants to bet, I have no doubt of the outcome.”

Asked about federal disaster relief for recent tornado and flood victims at last night’s GOP debate, candidate Mitt Romney called the spending “immoral” and said the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be privatized. With greenhouse pollution on the rise, the United States has been struck by a “punishing series of billion-dollar disasters.”

Embracing a radical anti-government ideology from the most extreme elements of the Tea Party, Romney said that the victims in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and other communities hit by tornadoes and flooding should not receive governmental assistance. He argued it is “simply immoral” for there to be deficit spending that could harm future generations:

Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. […] We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.

Sen. Harry Reid resumes antagonizing Mitt Romney, this time over his visit to Louisiana, via WaPo:

“It is the height of hypocrisy for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to make a pretense of showing sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Isaac when their policies would leave those affected by this disaster stranded and on their own,” Reid said.

“If Paul Ryan and his fellow House Republicans had succeeded in blocking disaster relief last fall, there would have been no aid for the victims of Isaac today. And Paul Ryan’s budget would gut disaster funding, making it much harder to get aid to our fellow Americans in their time of need,” he added.

We’ve been keeping a close eye on Republican efforts to suppress early voting in Ohio, and Democratic efforts to create a level playing field. Today, a federal court delivered a major victory to those who support expansive voting rights and opportunities.

U.S. District Court Senior Judge Peter C. Economus ordered Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted not to enforce a state law passed last year that closed that window to in-person early voting to anyone but members of the military and their families.

“This Court notes that restoring in-person early voting to all Ohio voters through the Monday before Election Day does not deprive (military) voters from early voting,” wrote Judge Economus, a Clinton appointee. “Instead, and more importantly, it places all Ohio voters on equal standing.

“The only hindrance to (military) early voting is the Secretary of State’s failure to set uniform hours at elections boards during the last three days before Election Day,” he wrote. “On balance, the right of Ohio voters to vote in person during the last three days prior to Election Day — a right previously conferred to all voters by the State — outweighs the State’s interest in setting the 6 p.m. Friday deadline.”

To briefly recap for those who haven’t been following this story, Ohio allowed voters an early-voting window of three days before Election Day, which in turn boosted turnout and alleviated long lines. This year, Republican officials wanted to close the window — active-duty servicemen and women could vote early, but no one else, not even veterans, could enjoy the same right.

One prominent Republican official recently conceded he opposes weekend voting because it would “accommodate the urban — read African American — voter-turnout machine.”

President Obama’s campaign team filed suit, asking for a level playing field, giving every eligible Ohio voter — active-duty troops, veterans, and civilians — equal access. Today, a federal court agreed. If the ruling stands, every eligible Ohio voter will be able to cast a ballot during the three-day, early-voting window leading up to Election Day on Nov. 6.

Mitt Romney is focused on convincing Americans that his private-sector business record qualifies him to be President, which is perhaps why he accidentally called the United States of America a “company” instead of a “country” on Friday.

While Romney has spoken extensively about running the government more efficiently, like a private business, he has never compared the entire American enterprise to an actual business enterprise. But today, at an event in Florida, Romney did just that, saying his administration will reach out to people who “want to make sure this company deals with its challenges”:

Paul Ryan and I understand how the economy works, we understand how Washington works, we will reach across the aisle and find good people who like us, want to make sure this company deals with its challenges. We’ll get America on track again.

Obama: There’s A Difference Between Republicans In Washington And GOP Voters
In an exclusive interview with Parade set to hit newstands on Sunday, President Barack Obama suggested that it may be easier to achieve a consensus with Congressional Republicans in a second term if they espoused the views of the people who vote them into office.

Republican voters, if you ask them about my particular policy positions, often agree with me. So there’s a difference between Republicans in Washington and Republican and Republican-leaning voters around the country. I think that after this election, we’ll be in a position to once again reach out to Republicans and say that the American people have rendered a judgment, and the positions we’re taking are well within what used to be considered bipartisan centrist approaches.

A federal judge in Ohio restored early voting rights in the three days before the election on Friday, ruling in favor of the Obama campaign.

U.S. District judge Peter C. Economus ruled that “restoring in-person early voting to all Ohio voters through the Monday before Election Day does not deprive UOCAVA voters from early voting.”

“Instead, and more importantly, it places all Ohio voters on equal standing,” Economus ruled. He said the state “fails to articulate a precise, compelling interest in establishing the 6 p.m. Friday deadline as applied to non-UOCAVA voters and has failed to evidence any commitment to the ‘exception’ it rhetorically extended to UOCAVA voters.”

A single provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been playing a key role on the election front this year. Section 5 has blocked photo voter-ID laws, prohibited reduced early-voting periods in parts of Florida and just Tuesday barred new redistricting maps in Texas.

It’s the reason South Carolina is in federal court this week to try to convince a three-judge panel its photo voter-ID law will not disenfranchise minorities. It’s the reason that Texas went to trial on the same issue last month — and on Thursday, lost.

Not surprisingly, then, Section 5 is increasingly the target of attack by those who say it is outdated, discriminatory against Southern states and unconstitutional.

Under the provision, certain states and localities with a history of anti-minority election practices must obtain federal approval or “pre clearance” before making changes to voting laws. In present day, that requirement is burdensome, “needlessly aggressive” and based on outdated coverage criteria, two petitions filed in July with the U.S. Supreme Court argue.

Section 5 applies to nine states — Texas, South Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia and Alaska — and currently to parts of Florida, California, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Michigan and New Hampshire. The original coverage formula looked at whether states imposed unfair devices like literacy tests in November 1964, whether less than 50 percent of the voting-age population was registered to vote as of that date, or if less than 50 percent of eligible voters voted in the November 1964 presidential election. In 1975, the formula expanded to include jurisdictions that provided election materials only in English when members of a language minority made up more than 5 percent of voting-age citizens
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READ ONhttp://www.nationofchange.org/print/25556

Amid all the smearing and laughter about the “chair” and that class A Klown, what I find especially dismaying is the symbolism. Note the Klown was standing, so the “invisible President” had to be sitting. Imagine, the Klown in an actual conversation telling PBO how bad his performance as CIC is. He would be towering over the most powerful “boy” in the free world. And this Ms. Priss who wants to be not just FLOTUS, but MO herself, calls him a child. There are no dog whistles going off- there are full blown sirens screaming ” bigots are mad as hell” that a black man and woman are in white folks’ endowed seats of power. This shit is real. We’d better act like it is 1950 and invoke the spirits of our ancestors. Else, we write our own death knell.

On Tuesday night, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) delivered the Republican National Committee’s keynote address, and assured the audience, “Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear” — a phrase Christie used three times. A day later, Paul Ryan vowed, “We will not duck the tough issues.”

By last night, those promises seemed more like wishful thinking than campaign promises. Mitt Romney had a unique opportunity to step up, “tell us the hard truths,” and take on “the tough issues,” but in his formal introduction to the nation as his party’s presidential nominee, Romney preferred to play it safe, delivering a generic, vague, and unambitious speech.

Going into last night, the former governor had a fairly straightforward task. In effect, his goal was to tell voters, “I’m Mitt Romney, and if you elect me, here’s what I’ll do.”

Controversial Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joseph Arpaio must stand trial on allegations that he had two alternative newspaper executives jailed in retaliation for articles criticizing his activities, a federal appeals court has held.

An en banc panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (PDF) Wednesday that Arpaio and special county prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik could not use governmental immunity to shield themselves from a lawsuit brought by the owners of Phoenix New Times, the National Law Journal reports.

In the suit, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, co-owners of New Times, alleged that they were arrested and jailed overnight in 2007 in retaliation for reporting that Arpaio’s allies in the county attorney’s office had unlawfully obtained grand jury subpoenas demanding that they identify their sources for articles critical of the sheriff. Some of the articles also questioned Arpaio’s real estate transactions.

The en banc ruling reversed a 2010 decision by a three-judge panel, which affirmed a lower court holding that Arpaio and Wilenchik, a private-practice attorney appointed as a special county prosecutor to investigate the newspaper’s activities, were entitled to qualified immunity from the plaintiff’s constitutional claims.

The 11-judge panel, in a 72-page opinion, found that the plaintiffs adequately alleged several causes of action for which the defendants are not entitled to qualified immunity.

Yep, Clint’s another angry white man who is threatened by PBO’s power. Ralph Ellison was spot on. These crackers don’t want to see you, your blacknessand power as POTUS is way too much for the. They don’t want to see you as a man at all.

On the night of Barack Obama’s inauguration, Republican leaders met in a private dining room at an expensive Washington, D.C., steakhouse to plot their comeback. It was a mix of congressmen and senators with three others added to diversify the gathering of white men. Pollster Frank Luntz, right-wing journalist Fred Barnes, and former speaker (and soon-to-be former presidential candidate) Newt Gingrich. Gingrich gave the opening remarks and gave tactical advice throughout, including a suggestion for Republicans to target the tax problems of New York Democrat Charlie Rangel. At the end of the night, Gingrich proclaimed, “You will remember this day. You’ll remember this as the day the seeds of 2012 were sown.”

Unemployment in the private sector too high?
One way to improve that is to turn thousands of federal jobs over to corporations.

That’s what Republicans call for in the platform they adopted this week in Tampa.

The platform says Transportation Security Administration “procedures — and much of its personnel — need to be changed. It is now a massive bureaucracy of 65,000 employees who seem to be accountable to no one for the way they treat travelers. We call for the private sector to take over airport screening wherever feasible and look toward the development of security systems that can replace the personal violation of frisking.”

That plank drew this retort from Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee:

“Like much of the Republican platform, the provision calling for privatization of the TSA workforce is not based on an understanding of the facts. Private screeners are in place today at 16 airports and enforce the same policies, use the same procedures, and operate the same machines as screeners employed by the Federal government. There is no evidence that the use of screeners who are paid by a private company would improve security or produce a savings for the taxpayer.”

Ann Romney said Friday women voters were considering supporting her husband because “it’s time for the grown-up to come.”

“I’m hearing from so many women that may not have considered voting for a Republican before, but said, ‘It’s time for the grown-up to come, the man that’s going to take this seriously, that’s going to take the future of our children very, very seriously’,” Romney told Candy Crowley on CNN’s “Starting Point.”

[…]

“I believe I will” watch their speeches, Romney said on “Fox and Friends. ” “I want to hear the president speak and i hope — I’m assuming Michelle will speak. I want to hear her speak.”

Karl Rove Jokes That He Wants To Kill Todd Akin | At a fundraiser Thursday, Karl Rove told top Republican donors of his plans to use his “outside” groups — Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads — to win House and Senate seats for the party. During his remarks, Bloomberg Businessweek reports, he made the off-color joke: “We should sink Todd Akin. If he’s found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts!” Crossroads GPS pulled its pro-Akin ads after the Missouri Congressman and Republican Senate nominee said victims of “legitimate rape” are unlikely to become pregnant.

Political conventions occasionally produce memorable moments that endure. The Chicago riots in 1968, Cuomo’s “Tale of Two Cities” speech in 1984, Al kissing Tipper in 2000, Obama’s “audacity of hope” in 2004 — these are memories that quickly entered the political history books, reminding us why conventions still matter.

Last night, we saw another such moment, when Clint Eastwood decided to argue with an empty chair.

Chances are you’ve at least heard about Eastwood’s “speech,” but for those who missed it, trust me when I tell you it’s worth your time. As Rachel explained on the air once it was over, “That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at a political convention in my entire life, and it will be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen if I live to be 100.”

Paul Krugman: Paul Ryan’s speech Wednesday night may have accomplished one good thing: It finally may have dispelled the myth that he is a Serious, Honest Conservative. Indeed, Mr. Ryan’s brazen dishonesty left even his critics breathless.

Some of his fibs were trivial but telling, like his suggestion that President Obama is responsible for a closed auto plant in his hometown, even though the plant closed before Mr. Obama took office. Others were infuriating, like his sanctimonious declaration that “the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” This from a man proposing savage cuts in Medicaid, which would cause tens of millions of vulnerable Americans to lose health coverage.

Has there ever been a more dishonest presidential campaign than the one Republicans are waging right now?

That’s a serious question, and it adds poignancy to the tragicomic spectacle of this ridiculous gathering…..

Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s speech Wednesday night was another demonstration that he and presidential nominee Mitt Romney have no apparent respect for the truth. Romney’s pollster, Neil Newhouse, boasted this week that “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” I’ll say.

…. For me, the ultimate dishonor goes to the untrue charge that Obama has eliminated the work requirement for welfare recipients — a lie designed not only to deceive but also to stoke racial resentment among working-class voters. There are also the cynical and misleading claims about Medicare savings under the Affordable Care Act. And Obama’s “You didn’t build that” line, taken out of context, has provided the convention’s main theme, a mantra recited by virtually every speaker.

It’s hardly unusual for politicians to highlight convenient facts and ignore inconvenient ones. But I honestly can’t recall a campaign so firmly grounded in untruth. Anyone who hoped Ryan might elevate the debate should be bitterly disappointed.

Once again, Romney showed that his campaign will launch attacks with little regard for their veracity. “Unlike President Obama,” he said, “I will not raise taxes on the middle class.” … Obama has in fact asked Congress to retain current tax rates for families earning less than $250,000 a year.

“I will begin my presidency with a jobs tour,” Romney also said. “President Obama began with an apology tour.” There was no apology tour. And Romney suggested that Republicans had been initially eager to work with the president, when in fact the party was determined from the beginning to oppose virtually all of Obama’s initiatives.

…. there will be a jarring contrast between the Romney who spoke of uniting the nation and his exceptionally harsh, relentless and divisive advertising campaign that includes factually-challenged spots on welfare plainly aimed at stirring resentment.

The stark disjunction will inevitably keep alive the question that his convention speech did not answer: Who is the real Romney?

Mitt Romney wrapped the most important speech of his life around an extraordinary reinvention of history — that his party rallied behind President Obama when he won in 2008, hoping that he would succeed….

The truth, rarely heard this week in Tampa, is that the Republicans charted a course of denial and obstruction from the day Mr. Obama was inaugurated, determined to deny him a second term by denying him any achievement, no matter the cost to the economy or American security — even if it meant holding the nation’s credit rating hostage to a narrow partisan agenda.

Mr. Romney’s big speech, delivered in a treacly tone with a strange misty smile on his face suggesting he was always about to burst into tears, was of a piece with the rest of the convention. Republicans have offered precious little of substance …. but no subjects have received less attention, or been treated with less honesty, than foreign affairs and national security — and Mr. Romney’s banal speech was no exception.

It’s easy to understand why the Republicans have steered clear of these areas. While President Obama is vulnerable on some domestic issues, the Republicans have no purchase on foreign and security policy. In a television interview on Wednesday, Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, could not name an area in which Mr. Obama had failed on foreign policy.

The publisher of a homespun conspiracy newspaper has several black activists in Hawaii alarmed after he offered to pay them each $50 for copies of their birth certificates so he can expose that President Barack Obama is secretly not American.

The scheme, hatched by “Molokai Advertiser-News” publisher George Peabody, came to the attention of reporter Anita Hofschneider with the Honolulu Civil Beat.

Hofschneider noted that Peabody contacted the Martin Luther King Jr. Coalition, the African American Heritage Foundation of Maui and the Hawaii NAACP on August 25, asking each groups’ leaders for copies of their birth certificates.

TAMPA (The Borowitz Report)—Coining a phrase that seems destined to become his new campaign slogan, Mitt Romney needed only three words last night to accept the Republican Presidential nomination: “I bought it.”

Those words had a special meaning for Mr. Romney, who had to spend seventy million dollars in the G.O.P. primaries to defeat a serial adulterer, a former pizza executive, and a crackpot in a sweater-vest.

It has been an up-and-down convention for Mr. Romney, who was largely ignored at Tea Party rallies early in the week but later picked up a key endorsement from his wife.

Tonight, however, was a time to reflect, as he put it, “on money well spent.”

“Our opponents say that America is in decline, that it is no longer number one,” he said. “I say our democracy is the best that money can buy.”

Having given conservatives everything they had asked for — from switching his positions on abortion and immigration to picking their favorite as his running mate — Romney turned Thursday night to his essential task: converting some President Obama’s 2008 supporters into Republican voters.

At a convention where the rhetoric was harsh and often indifferent to facts and even the truth itself, Romney took the path of quiet persuasion. For the most part, he chose not to speak to the fervor and anger of political activists on the Right. He addressed instead less partisan voters whom he hopes will be open to his candidacy by virtue of their disappointment with the man who had inspired them four years ago.

Hope and change had a powerful appeal,” Romney said in the speech’s key passage. “But tonight I’d ask a simple question: If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn’t you feel that way now that he’s President Obama? You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.”

In a sense, the appeal Romney re-launched here was the argument he had hoped to make from the beginning – that the election was primarily an exercise in judging the incumbent’s stewardship and particularly a painfully slow economic recovery.

Romney’s turn had been promised last March by his veteran aide Eric Fehrnstrom who provided his boss’s foes with a useful metaphor for describing the ease with which the candidate has altered his positions on a long list of issues.

After the primary campaign, Fehrnstron argued, “everything changes,” and he added: “It’s almost like an Etch a Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and start all over again.”

Black Girls Rock!

Flickr Photos

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AFRO PUFFS

Most Adorable Shoe Stealer

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Fatherhood

Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.